Harold Simmons Park in Dallas
- ORGEL
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
The Trinity River flows through the center of the City of Dallas and divides the downtown center from West Dallas, with the riverbanks providing little connection to the greenery, except for a few walking paths and trails. The infrastructure serves to transport vehicles across the river, and it's not built as a place to stay and engage the natural environment. However, that is changing with the Harold Simmons Park Project which broke ground in spring 2025 and is set to be complete in stages over the next few years.
The 250-acre urban nature park is designed to reconnect Dallas with its natural environment and foster community unity. It’s an accessible, ecologically rich public space. Named after the late Dallas philanthropist Harold Simmons, it's being developed by the Trinity Park Conservancy as part of the larger 10,000-acre Trinity River Corridor Plan. This public-private partnership represents the largest project of this type in Dallas. The design team includes firms like Lake Flato Architects and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc., which are experienced in blending natural landscapes and urban amenities.
Trinity Park Conservancy is the nonprofit stewarding the park and was structured to include both a park creation team and a dedicated community development group. This ensures the vision remains grounded in local context, responds to neighborhood needs, and anchors local community activity.
A substantial piece of the project is the West Overlook which will support a full range of experiences: water features, gardens, destination playgrounds, a picnic grove, and lawns for events and relaxation. Integrated into the design are physical artifacts from the site’s history, namely an existing 1,000-foot-long steel fabrication shed that has been adapted to create an open-air social area. The repurposed structure is interwoven with park programming, providing shade and rain cover under its generous roofline. New architecture includes an event building overlooking the park, a welcome and education center, a multi-level cafe, and the cable ferry pavilion.
The Harold Simmons Park project represents more than just green space - it's a deliberate effort to heal decades of disconnection between two sides of Dallas, and the people to its river. By combining ecological restoration with thoughtful community development and adaptive reuse of industrial heritage, the park will transform an underutilized corridor into a vibrant public amenity that serves as both a natural environment and a social gathering place for all of Dallas.
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